Moving
by Thanfiction
Summary: The most precious and painful things are hidden in plain sight.


The rural bus stop bathroom was out of order, had been for weeks, spider webs thick across the mouth of the toilet that had been clogged so long that the fetid contents had baked dry in the Flagstaff heat. The smell was still beyond repugnant, but hardly as bad as Genghis Kahn's pyramids of heads or the overflowing sewers of London during the plague, and more important, it lowered his chances of being disturbed even further.

Still, it was a good thing he didn't have to worry about infection. Castiel stripped off carefully, wrapping his clothes in two layers of plastic bags from the convenience store, not yet sure how much he would be able to control and wanting to preserve them clean enough for a reasonable getaway if he had to ration his powers. He'd lost his blade at the crypt, but a box cutter had worked on his vessel previously, and it fared well enough again. He just had to do it in layers, and after a first spray of scarlet against the stained and cracked mirror, he staunched the bleeding and incised the abdominals easily enough, bracing himself against the broken hand dryer as he lost the core support and had to tense his back, lock his legs oddly to keep upright. Damn the weight of the wings.

Sweat began to slide surreally down the line of his nose, beading like tears, moistening his palms and making him grip the plastic housing of the blade all the tighter as he finished. It wasn't the pain. There was no pain; negating those signals had been child's play learned long ago in the navigation of the little meatpuppet's nervous system. What flushed his face, speeded his breathing, trembled his hands was the vulnerability. There was no hope if he didn't do this, no way to run with it blaring like a beacon, nowhere else to hide it, but if they caught him now…no. He had to focus. Act swiftly, efficiently. Get it done and keep moving.

Moving.

Moving.

For an eternity if he had to.

Once, he'd fantasized about a life on the road. Such a strange thing itself, that; an angel fantasizing. Perhaps that itself could be considered a trait of free will, the desire for a specific outcome rejecting the idea of inevitability. Naomi, of course, would have called it a deviation. Malfunction. Misbehavior. Treason. Or worse.

Hadn't been like this, of course, those idle thoughts that had occupied him in the dim forests of Purgatory and the dark, unseen corners of motel rooms where he wasn't violating anything as long as he didn't watch Dean sleep, he just happened to be there and tuning in to the signals broadcast towards the television that didn't need to be on. Even when he'd accepted that it would be a life pursued, a life very often set in dingy ratholes like this, a life of danger, it would have been a life with friends. With family, of a sort he'd come to love more dearly than he could even understand and was still afraid to try to. With Dean.

But not any more. He was alone. The worst possible thing for an angel, but still better than seeing Dean and Sam destroyed any further by his deeds…or by the innocuous-looking slab of rock sitting on the corner of the chipped, filthy, now blood-smeared sink. Fantasies didn't matter. Only the here and now mattered, split open and bleeding and pale gaping vulnerable red.

Had to keep moving.

Moving.

Moving.

It was a good thing the vessel hadn't eaten since its last resurrection, hadn't even consumed anything other than a few cups of coffee. The intestines and stomach were completely empty, allowing him room to slide the bulky tablet behind them, deep in the abdominal cavity against the muscles of the back and the inner posterior abdominal wall.

He pulled his hand free, sealing the skin with the brief, glowing pass of a fingertip, then turning, carefully evaluating the results. There was no sign of a wound, but more importantly - even stripped naked as he suspected they might search him - when he turned, bent, stretched, twisted, there was no distortion of the lean, athletic frame of the vessel. He fought the urge to touch his hand to the unmarred skin, understanding suddenly and with a fascinating clarity the instinct of pregnant females. To know that one had something so precious within one's body, to be able to feel it, alien and intimate, shifting slightly and weighted oddly inside, discomfort and pressure that couldn't be ignored but wasn't really pain…it was humbling and frightening.

Bodies were so fragile, so human. They would expect the tablet to be cast into the depths of the ocean, buried in the roiling magma shaft of a volcano, locked in fathoms of arctic ice. Not encased in something so simple. Hide in plain sight. Use the names of classic rock stars; most people won't place them right away, but they give a sense of vague familiarity that gets you trusted, and if they do call you out, laugh about it and you have a shared joke. Tricks of the trade. When humans want something really badly, they lie.

He wanted to linger, he was weary - so weary and that too was human and it made him want to treasure it somehow. But bodies were fragile. There was no time. He could feel them coming. He dressed quickly, cleared away the blood. He could feel them coming.

Had to keep moving.

Moving.

Moving.

Not thinking.

Not feeling.

Not dreaming.

There was no room in a world of angels for what he held inside.


End file.
